Gladder

Part of speech: adjective, comparative

Definitions

1. Feeling more joyful or pleased than before; causing happiness or increased cheerfulness in oneself or others; showing signs of being more content or uplifted
2. Experiencing an enhanced sense of delight or satisfaction; producing a state of happiness or light-heartedness in someone; indicating an improved mood or spirit
3. Being in a more cheerful or joyous frame of mind; bringing about feelings of pleasure or brightness; demonstrating a heightened level of happiness or positive emotion

Etymology: Gladder is simply the comparative of "glad," so its story is really the story of the older adjective it modifies. Its Old English ancestor, "glædra," was the comparative of "glæd," a word that originally meant "shining" or "bright" before it came to mean joyful. That shift is the surprising part: the sense of gladness grew out of a physical idea of light, so a glad thing was first one that gleamed. The form itself is ordinary English comparison, but it came from Middle English "gladere," which passed down the same comparative pattern. A separate and less certain line of thought treats the word as deriving from an agent noun meaning "one who makes glad," or possibly from a lost Middle English verb "gladderen," built on Old English "gladrian" ("to make glad") with the frequentative suffix "-er." Scholars are not fully settled on which of these two routes is correct.

Synonyms: happier, more joyful, cheerier, more pleased

Antonyms: sadder, more unhappy, more miserable